


Anchor

by laetificat



Category: The West Wing
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 06:22:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17095463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laetificat/pseuds/laetificat
Summary: Toby and Sam have a moment, after Rosslyn.





	Anchor

The hospital was eerily quiet. Something to do, Toby figured, with the Secret Service agents standing in the doorways, or the lack of staff and patients who didn’t have security clearance. Or maybe it was just the aftermath of.. everything. The sudden lack of sirens ringing in his ears. No shouts or screaming, just hushed voices and soft footsteps.

Strange how the absence of chaos could make silence seem less comfortable. Like the silence after a breath that means something is terribly wrong. 

Toby stood outside the bathroom, turning over a penny in his pocket to have something to do with his fingers. He wanted badly to pace, but that would make him feel like he was waiting, when he wasn’t waiting, he was just leaning against the wall. Reading the pamphlets. Being in this place. Not waiting. Just being there.

The door opened and he looked up in time to see Sam emerge, pale, shadow-eyed, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. As their eyes met, Sam’s expression softened, gratitude gathering in the corners of his mouth; something in Toby’s chest tightened in response. In the back of his mind he wondered if he would ever get to the point of feeling like he deserved a look like that.

“Toby,” Sam breathed, stepping towards him. Toby put a gentle hand on his shoulder, steering him out of the corridor and into an empty side room, closing the door after them. 

The room was dim, fluorescent light filtering in through the mostly-shut blinds falling in stripes across the diagnostic equipment and posters about blood pressure. For a moment Toby wondered about the people they’d displaced, whether they were having as long of a night as he was. Sam’s shoulder was warm and reassuringly solid under Toby’s palm as Sam turned to face him. 

“Toby, I can’t -- I went to the bathroom and I looked down and there were.. these little spots of blood on my hands,” he lifted the hands in question, brushing Toby’s chest, “and I can’t stop thinking -- ”

“I know, Sam. I know.” Toby tugged Sam forward a little. “Come here.”

Sam obeyed, folding into Toby’s embrace, all long lean bones and the antiseptic smell of hospital soap. Toby smoothed the rumpled folds of his shirt down over his back, feeling the rise and fall of Sam’s sigh, the feathery heat of Sam’s breath against the side of his throat.

“I always thought,” he continued softly, “if I was going to be in.. that situation. When we had the security briefings. I thought, I would -- ”

“I know,” Toby murmured, because he did know. He knew the small tremors running up Sam’s spine under the pads of his fingers. He knew the stale taste of coffee rising up the back of his throat because it was it was 4AM after the longest, the absolute longest day in the world and he knew the feeling of being unmoored, useless, filled with words to describe something he couldn’t even begin to fathom. 

Sam subsided a little more, hands sliding down Toby’s back as he buried his face against his neck. Toby closed his eyes, inhaling the scent of Sam’s pomade and sweat and expensive cologne, remembering earlier and easier times, when all they’d had to worry about was polling numbers and getting enough sleep to be able to work in the morning. Letting the feel of Sam’s body anchor him to this moment. 

“Fuck.” Sam’s voice buzzed against his skin. Somewhere outside the room, a phone began ringing. Footsteps outside the door, fading away.

“Yeah,” Toby sighed. 

“When I heard you shouting, I thought -- ” Sam’s arms tightened briefly around Toby’s waist. “I thought, for a second. That -- ”

Toby let out a breath, chest tight with remembered fear, the blurry moments of the aftermath, all of them trying to find each other, gripping hands and shoulders and realising how close they'd come -- how close they still were to losing everything. He turned his face, putting his mouth against Sam’s warm neck, nuzzling into his hair. “I know.” 

“And I thought -- and then it was, it was Josh. And for a moment I was almost.. I..” He shuddered under Toby’s palms.

Toby leaned back, reaching up to touch Sam’s face, meeting his gaze in the soft grey shadows, thumb drifting over his forehead and his cheek like he was an old bubbe trying to wipe away tears. Words trapped, for once, expressed instead in the slide of his fingers into Sam’s hair and leaning forward, meeting Sam’s mouth with his, tasting bitter coffee grounds and salt. 

Sam moaned a response against his lips and gripped a handful of Toby’s shirt, and something like lust rose suddenly between them, unasked, unlooked-for, stupid and base and alive, and then a table or something bumped against the back of Toby’s thighs as Sam pressed him backwards, and Toby was chasing Sam’s tongue with his own, clumsy, bumping teeth and panting breaths. 

And then Toby was pulling back, somehow, clutching at Sam at the same time as he was pushing him away. 

“Come on, no, we can’t do this right now. Come on, it’s okay, Sam, it’s okay,” because Sam was shaking in his arms, pulling in shuddering breaths and grabbing at him again and they were falling backwards again but this time it wasn’t lust but grief, pulling the world out from under their feet. And Toby palmed Sam’s hair and held him against his chest and mouthed words he couldn’t say, tears running unchecked to drip off his jaw. 

It’s okay, he said, to Sam, to himself, to nobody. It’s going to be okay.


End file.
